By Tobi Loba
As a report has it, Bitcoin scammers have stolen relatively $2 million worth of BTC in the interval of 2 months by impersonating the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, and his private spacecraft company, SpaceX.
According to ZDNet, The founder and CEO of cyber-defense firm Adaptive, Justin Lister, made the compilation of Bitcoin (BTC) vanity addresses capitalizing on the name of Elon Musk since the end of April.
Vanity addresses are the type of Bitcoin addresses having a name that can be recognized in the actual addresses to make the scam look legitimate.
A typical example of a vanity address is “1MuskPsV7BnuvMuHGWmmXUyXKjxp3vLZX6.”
Lister was able to compile the list of the vanity addresses with the help of BitcoinAbuse, a website that specializes in tracking Bitcoin addresses used by blackmailers, ransomware, and fraudsters.
The CEO of the cyber-defense firm, Adaptive, was able to find 67 Elon Musk vanity addresses that scammers have used to steal a total of 214 BTC worth $2 million at press time, from unsuspecting victims.
Scammers Hack YouTube Accounts With Huge Followers
According to the report made available by ZDNet, the desperate scammers also resort to hacking YouTube accounts with huge followers.
They always change the names and graphics of the hijacked YouTube accounts to impersonate famous persons or brands, followed by sharing their vanity addresses with the teeming followers, via live stream.
The unsuspecting victims are thereby deceived into sending BTC to the shared vanity addresses, promising that their crypto assets will experience a notable increase within a short time.
In order to make their perpetration look legitimate, scammers at times make their live streams be in sync with real events related to the impersonated celebrity or brand.
Various con artists have associated their duplicity with giveaways related to Musk or SpaceX, after the private spacecraft company successfully launched a manned crew into space at the end of May 2020.
I was scammed 1 BTC. is there any legal remedy? Recourse?